Politics in California has become a dismal proposition. The state is so large that most politicians have given up on the standard ceremonies of the stump. There is little human contact, few town meetings or door-to-door work; there are simply too many doors. The prevailing wisdom among consultants is that you run in California by raising a lot of money and putting it all on television. The public has reacted to these soulless exercises with disdainful apathy; Californians tend to be more interested when the state's nutty kernel of political extremists put some hot-button initiative—about race, immigration or taxes, inevitably—on the ballot. Indeed, there is a weird karmic genius to the current electoral gimmick, the movement to recall Governor Gray Davis from office. It has turned politics itself into a ballot issue—with Davis in the dock, representing a system run aground.
August 8, 2003 5:21 AM
